I went into Burlington today and the lady behind the register of the grocery store asked me if my camera had film in it. It didn’t. I think the photographs I took before I switched to digital were better. There’s something to the risk and the stakes of film photography, the cost of it, that just makes it better. You get 36 shots, and they cost a fair bit of time and money to develop, scan, and print. 

You might think it’s possible to simply infuse a digital camera with the same stakes. Set a rule that you must only take 36 shots before taking a break for 60 or 120 seconds to simulate a reload, and for each hundred exposures, donate $100 to a charity of some kind. Such artificial constraints and structures do little to enhance the photography because they are inauthentic. 

The craft of a thing, and the reality of it is not merely an aspect that inspires the maker or increases cost with quality and rarity, it is the boniest part of reality elbowing into the meaning of the work.

This can run counter to good work, too. Glass blowing is so difficult a craft that by the time you can make a thing you’re more concerned with the how of it. Design follows technique almost directly in that craft.

An easier craft like photography or woodworking has more room for play. You can be bad at those things and still produce thrilling work, you must be a master of glassblowing to even produce anything at all, and masters produce altogether different work from their apprentices: often stodgier, stiffer, and less interesting. 

Dan Carlin suggested that the horse archers of the Mongolian Steppe were the finest military units of the medieval era. Given that, he wondered why the French or the Italian didn’t put men with bows or crossbows on horseback, and while they may have to some small number, it was never in force, and never done effectively. He believes, as do I, that it is because they cannot pretend after a thing that requires the whole of a person. The steppe archer is not a man on a horse, he is a person who worships the sky, he drinks the blood of his horse instead of milk, he has callouses on his fingers. 

We cannot pretend after things and expect authentic outcomes, we must do them, and fully, to enjoy the true fruit of their experience.

Our society I think mistakes façade for substance and pleasure for goodness.